from GAT

“Deliciously creepy. Alongside Gremlins and The Night Before Christmas, this audacious and unashamedly silly gift is an anti-holiday cult classic in the making.” Village Voice

Helander’s direction recalls early Spielberg, resembles Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s whimsies, and has a black comedy that evokes Joe Dante’s work. Slant Magazine

… the best anti-Christmas Christmas movie since Bad Santa. LA Weekly

Grand Prize winner at both Sitges Film Festival and Wales’ Abertoir Horror Festival.

You may want to shout, you may want to cry. Santa Claus is coming to town.

In the depths of the Korvatunturi mountains, 486 metres deep, lies the closest ever guarded secret of Christmas. The time has come to dig it up!

It’s Christmas Eve in northern Finland, and an ‘archeological’ dig has just unearthed the real Santa Claus. But this particular Santa isn’t going to be bought off with milk and cookies. When the local children begin mysteriously disappearing, young Pietari and his father Rauno, a reindeer hunter by trade, capture the mythological being and attempt to sell Santa to the misguided leader of the multinational corporation sponsoring the dig. Santa’s elves, however, will stop at nothing to free their fearless leader from captivity.

What ensues is a wildly humorous nightmare – a fantastically bizarre satire of modern day morality.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale written & directed by Jalmari Helander is a re-imagining of the most classic of all childhood fantasies, and is a darkly comic gem rapidly gaining status as must-see alternative holiday viewing.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, will have its Toronto theatrical run at The Royal, starting Friday December 17.